A Very Private Plot Read Online Free PDF

afternoon and early in the evening that Nikolai really had time with his aunt.
    He looked forward eagerly to those Wednesday afternoons, when Titka would read to him and talk to him and play chess. She owned only a dozen books, so she went regularly to the library. Nikolai couldn’t remember ever being without reading material. Titka would always ask, when she was still reading out loud to him—he took to reading for himself when he reached six—“What would you like me to read to you about?” His answer was always the same, and Titka loved to hear it from him: “Anything.” That meant, for a year or two, stories about animals or knights or high adventures on sea and on land.
    But one day Titka thought to play a little trick on him. She had brought home from the farmers’ refectory a discarded copy of Pravda , which she privately considered the most boring text in the Soviet Union, in particular the editor’s page.
    â€œAnything?” she asked teasingly.
    â€œYes, Titka. Anything.”
    So Titka opened the paper to the editorial for the day before, August 27, 1968. She read in her usual monotone, but moving along at a good clip, and the words were clearly enunciated. “‘The developments in Chicago yesterday at the Democratic National Convention resulted in a clear collision between the progressives, who were represented by Senator George McGovern, and the warmongering forces represented by Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Mr. Humphrey emphasized the need to bring more armed pressure to bear against the revolutionaries in Vietnam in order to frustrate them from achieving socialist liberty. President Lyndon Johnson, who remained in Washington because he is clearly afraid to expose himself even to his own Party, has thrown his considerable weight in favor of Mr. Humphrey as presidential candidate, in arrant opposition to the popular will. The fascist police of Chicago, who are creatures at the disposal of the Mayor, one Daley, whose public career has consisted in imprisoning and torturing any progressive voice in Chicago, in particular among the oppressed Negro people …’”
    Titka stopped. She had expected to be interrupted after the second or third sentence. She turned to Nikolai, who sat on the floor next to her, his bare legs crossed, his coarse shirt open at the collar—it was warm in August in the Ukraine—and said, “Are you … enjoying this, Nikolai?”
    â€œYes,” he had replied. “I do hope that the progressives in Chicago will prevail.”
    Titka blinked. She laid the paper down on her lap. “What do you know about the progressives in Chicago?”
    â€œOnly what you just said, Titka. They are being opposed by the fascist police of one Daley.”
    Titka was flustered, but continued to read through the one-thousand-word-long editorial, right to the end. Then she picked up the volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and read to Nikolai the tale about “Iron John.” His expression did not change.
    But the following Wednesday, after he had returned from school and done his chores in the little patch of vegetable garden, when they sat down he said to her, “Did they win? The progressives in Chicago?”
    Titka said that she did not have that day’s edition of the newspaper but she had scanned it at the collective and in fact they had not won; Mr. Humphrey had been nominated and would pursue his warlike course in Vietnam. Nikolai said that that was truly a pity, and he hoped someday Mr. Humphrey would come to Kiev, and maybe even to Brovary, so that he could see how progressives can live peaceful and orderly and productive lives. Titka turned her head away, her heart pounding, so he would not see the flush she knew betrayed her feelings. She thought fleetingly that perhaps now was the time to tell Nikolai about his grandparents in the winter of 1933, or about his parents, one month after he was born. No, she